Racism in Far Cry 3

Far Cry 3 is sort of racist. Because games are judged by a huge number of traits besides a story that occupies a comparatively small amount of play time, Far Cry 3 can still be a great game. And it is a great game – most definitely my favorite AAA game this year. But it is a retelling of a classic racist fable, and there's no way around that.

Cover of Dances with Wolves

The basic facts of Far Cry 3 are these: You are a spoiled white American male. You and your friends are taken captive by pirates on a Polynesian island. You are rescued by the natives. You become a warrior accepted by the native tribe, and gradually, the most respected warrior in their society. Your coming was foretold by prophecy. You make it with a hot native babe. You singlehandedly defeat the evil that they have struggled with for years in a QTE event.

There’s no way to see that as anything but the White Messiah story. It’s a classic formula at this point – see Avatar, Dances With Wolves, Fern Gully, The Last Samurai, certain tellings of St. George and the Dragon and more. It’s a particular kind of neo-racism under the guise of non-racism. Look! We are not racists, it says, we fight with the natives. How then could we be racist? But it ends up in the same place, painting the natives as nothing but bland spiritual warrior-types helpless without a white person to lead them.

Avatar is, in many ways, the perfect White Messiah story because it excuses itself from any sort of complicating reality. The white people are not really American, just generic white exploiters, and the natives are not any real tribe, just generic spiritual tree-people. These are anxieties that transcend specificity.

"Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration. It’s just escapism, obviously, but benevolent romanticism can be just as condescending as the malevolent kind ."

Far Cry 3 does the same thing. It attempts to use brief moments of description to excuse the rest of it (Dennis has a backstory, Citra is treacherous), but it doesn’t work. We still have that basic set-up, we still have a group of natives who are little more than stereotypes (most of them literally have the same face, but, you know, technology) and they still require a white person to save them. The biggest change to the story is that in the beginning, the enemies are not white imperialists but stereotypically crude African pirates. Guess what? They’re not smart enough to actually be the enemies. Spoiler alert, the real enemy is a white guy.

This isn’t just the traditional formula – it’s a little too brutal, a little too self-conscious and not romanticized enough for that. The native stereotype turns out more savage than noble savage. There's classic video game nihilism, where everyone involved is awful in one way or another. The sense of irony means that it’s not even a freedom fight. It's a sort of violent tourism. Which at least feels more honest.

It still serves the same purpose. It says that most Americans are vapid bros who couldn’t begin to imagine the violent horror that exists on a place like Rook Island. It lets us imagine that we are the exception. That’s what the White Messiah story does. It allows us to feel better about ourselves because we are different. We understand. We’re not. We don't. We just played a video game.

Perspective from Twitter user Skull-Buff Mcrad: “Apparently Far Cry 3 is both racist and sexist? I didn't notice because I was shooting sharks with arrows coz that's so fun.”